Theoretical Analysis of Three Bio-Inspired Plume Tracking Algorithms

Published in: Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2009)

: , 2009

We derive the theoretical performance of three bio-inspired odor source localization algorithms (casting, surge-spiral and surge-cast) in laminar wind flow. Based on the geometry of the trajectories and the wind direction sensor error, we calculate the distribution of the distance overhead and the mean success rate using Bayes inference. Our approach is related to particle filtering and produces smooth output distributions. The results are compared to existing real-robot and simulation results, and a good match is observed.